Family Picture
Beckmann, Max
Download104862_cp.jpg (988.7Kb)
Description
"Even life in the circle of Beckmann's family yielded no relief from anxiety. In Family Picture six disparate people are compressed into a small, crowded, low-ceilinged room. The artist himself, clutching a horn and wearing bright yellow shoes, lies on a narrow piano bench. Next to him stands his wife, whose grey face is reflected in an oval mirror and whose state of undress reminds one immediately of the bound woman in The Night. Frau Tude, Beckmann's mother-in-law, is seated at the table, hiding her face in her large hand. A sister-in-law stares out into the room, while a servant reads the newspaper at right. Peter Beckmann, the son, is stretched out on the floor, and a mysterious, small, crowned figure enters the space on the left from behind the piano. This personage- possibly related to the mysterious king in the central panel of Departure, painted some twelve years later- functions into Beckmann's iconography as a symbol of the painter himself...Beckmann was living apart from his family when this was painted." -- From Selz, Peter Howard, 1919- Max Beckmann / New York : Abbeville Press, 1996.
p.29 full view
Type of Work
Oil paintingSubject
Candles, Crowns (Headdresses), Families, Kites, Mirrors, Newspapers, Piano, Portraits, Group, Self portraits, Expressionism (Art), Despair, Entartete Kunst, Art, Modern --20th century
Rights
Rights Statement
Licensed for educational and research use by the MIT community only
Item is Part of
121390